The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by fidelio:

Tim Hall @102 and others--another reason for weaker second albums is that when the contract shows up, the band/solo artist often has a larger pool of songs to pick from--music they have developed over a course of time, from when they first formed to when they were signed and put together the first album, so they can pick their very best stuff; the second album will pull from the songs that didn't make the first cut, or from things written since--and given the push to have an album every year, as well as to tour and sell the first album, there's often less time to develop that new material. There may be less time to rehearse as well, depending on other calls on their time, and perhaps less time to think about and discuss what #2 should sound like.

These aren't the only cause of weaker-seeming second efforts--but we shouldn't overlook them as factors.

Carrie @296 et seq. and David Goldfarb--
I am put in mind of the song "Closing Time", with the first verse:

Closing time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
Closing time, turn all of the lights on
Over every boy and every girl
Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don’t have to go home
But you can’t stay here

(Bold added by me, just in case the bit in the last line slipped by people)

I wonder how much of the "Vatican II: How we hate it and will now make it go away" mindset is behind some of this. (Not "if", btw.)

It might be germane to point out, wrt grammar issues and Christianity, that the final blow in the fight that split the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in twain was over the addition of "filioque" to the Nicene Creed. It was well-intended; they were just groping for greater clarity in the Nicene Creed, when said in Latin rather than Greek--and things went downhill rapidly.

I'd explain, but it makes my head hurt. Read the Wikipedia article, and follow its links to other sources, if you have the strength. You are dealing here with people whose principal religious text identifies their Supreme Being with "Word*". The significance of, as well as the sacredness of specific language is not taken likely by this faith's theologians, whether that makes sense to us or not.


*Not the word-processing thing.

Sandy @ #154--I hope so, because while I've heard a lot from friends who are Marines, over the years, about the special closeness you find in the Corps, I don't think that was what they meant.

Also, while the Marines are often expected to make do with less, I really think they deserve to have one shirt per Marine.

cd @ #134--

from the article:

The shirt has been worn by actor Rainn Wilson of "The Office" and Allan Hyde of "True Blood." It was also worn by the U.S. Marine's Bravo Company 1st Combat Engineer Battalion.

Grammar and syntax--what happens when they fail.

So, did the Marines stuff themselves into a XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL, or does the fabric just have a lot of stretch?

I am very interested in seeing whether this would survive a complaint under the Americans with Disabilities act; as nerdycellist's example shows, he'd be punishing people for having medical conditions they can't help having--a healthy lifestyle may make conditions like Hashimoto's and PCOS more easily controlled, but it has nothing at all to do with whether or not you have those conditions in the first place. IANAL, and I don't know how far ADA can be carried wrt such conditions--but I suspect we'll find out soon enough.

Constance @837--

GEAUX SAINTS!

(ftfy)

Call me evil and suspicious...

OK, maybe it's spam, and maybe it's well-intentioned spam. And maybe it's just a link from a lurker with an agenda he cares about a lot.

Nancy C. Mittens @18--also, while Clinton did catch flack for "running on her husband", she did have a higher profile because of what she'd done, even if it was as an unelected specimen--and, as you said, she was willing to demonstrate an interest in the whole state, and not just the part with big checkbooks. She looked like a worker, too, which isn't something that comes to mind right off with young Mr. Ford.

Like a lot of political wives, she had learned to be as good a politician as her husband--while Harold Jr. has mostly learned to be a scion.

Harold Ford, Sr. built up an impressive political machine in Memphis, based on both his own abilities and his family's position in the community. It was able to thrive and prosper and even survive the connection to his brother John, who is able to take a place of pride (so to speak) in the Hall Of Amazingly Amazing Southern Politicians You Have to See to Believe*. Harold Sr. was able to pretty well turn over his congressional district to his son when he retired, and Harold Jr. did come amazingly close to winning the senatorial seat the egregious Bob Corker now graces. However, between the willingness of Corker to employ any tactics necesary (the Playboy ad, frex; please feel free to google it yourselves) and Uncle John and other members of the Ford family (there's Aunt Ophelia, too; we mustn't forget her) he didn't quite pull it off. Evidence that the Ford family influence in Memphis is waning can be seen by the fact that when Harold Jr.'s younger brother Jake ran as an independent in 2006 for the "family" house seat, trustng in the power of the name of Ford, he lost to Steve Cohen, who had represented parts of Memphis in the Tennessee legislature for many years, establishing a solid progressive record there.

I can see why Harold Jr. thinks he can do this; he came close in Tennesee, he's never seriously thought about what his family connections meant to him, because he could take them for granted, and after all, Hillary Clinton came in from Elsewhere and won New York's Senate seat, so clearly it can't be all that hard to sell yourself to New Yorkers.

Young Mr. Ford is such a creature of privilege that he really has no notion of how much he owes to that privilege and what he can claim from his own efforts. I wouldn't say that he's stupid or badly educated, but rather that he's the product of an immensely corrupt system (others who wish may speak out in greater detail about politics in the Southern US, and how the past is not just prequel, it's not even past, really). I think that his father kept his seat because more than likely he was able to deliver to his constituents what they wanted and needed, worked very hard to do so, and knew just how remarkable it was that he was in the right plce at the right time and able to take advantage of changing times. He's an intelligent man, and a politic one as well. I get a strong whiff of entitlement from most of the rest of the kinship, however, and somehow I don't think it's just me.


*Theodore Bilbo, where are you now?

I'm sorry, Ginger. May everything be the best that it can, and sooner rather than later.

Constance--I won't argue that nuclear power generation has a specific and serious set of risks associated with it that require careful management and oversight (issues which other countries, where regulatory capture is not quite so much of an approved pasttime*, seem to stay on top of). However, besides the carbon emission hazards (as well as the acid rain, and the damage caused by coal mining). coal-fired plants have a waste problem as well. Remember the TVA's little difficulties from late 2008? There are plenty of other chances for that to happen in other places.

It would be wonderful if we could manage to generate a lot more electrical power from wind and solar sources. I suspect that a lot more could be done to manage this, and that better governmental support at local, state, and federal levels, for everything from zoning issues to tax credits and grants would make this happen faster--and greater production of the needed equipment would make more individual-level general feasible (please can I have a wind turbine in my backyard? or two?). Events like Three-mile Island and Chernobyl certainly have done nothing to make nuclear power generation more lovable, but given good plant design, good oversight, and good management, all of them taking the risks inherent in such systems seriously, nuclear power has to be considered as a viable option.

*The US is not the only place where this is a risk, but damn! We're good at it. The problems with the USSR's nuclear power program were similar, if you consider the end effect of competing bureaucracies playing for high stakes.
While we can't be cavalier about the safety factors in nuclear plant construction and management, we shouldn't turn a blind eye to coal's shortcomings--and one of the things people worried about after the Kingston spill was possible low-level radioacyivity in the concentrated ash, as well as all those lovely heavy metals.

Wil Macaulay @34--that would be the one--and I notice the Lee Valley Tools site lists them as sold out for the holiday season.

kid bitzer, Joul Polowin, et al.:

Fullerene is another vesion of carbon structure.

Then there's the effect on the landscape of all that salty runoff when everything melts, to say nothing of the fact that large amounts of salt can damage concrete.

I saw a hypotrochoid drawing kit for sale around Christmas this year, and not the canonical Spirograph, either. It was labeled "Hypotrochoid art set", just as if they expected people to know what that meant and be pleased to snap it up and drag it home with them. Coincidence?

I think not.

(I bought two; both recipients were tickled to get them.)

alex, if we send the Marines they'll get stuck in the snow as well.

Lee, I flew back to Nashville from Kansas City last night (and I am glad to hear that Paula Helm Murray & co. have the new boiler in, because it is seriously cold there right now) and there was a woman at the Nashville airport who had come to pick someone up who was wrapped in one of those two-layer polar fleece throws that were last year's big craft item. You would have thought we were in Miami when they have one of those temperature drops to 45 degrees.

We're supposed to have a warm spell next week--I guess that'll give everyone a chance to go out and buy Snuggies, which they can wear outdoors and on the couch.

Comment statistics for fidelio on the Making Light blog

Total: 722 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)